Paul's guide to the net

challenge requirements:
write Paul McDermott's guide to the Internet

For many of the older generation this is the great mystery of life. With 100’s of million’s of ‘sites’ how could one ever understand the complex net-work that is the internet? Well to tell you the truth, I don’t think anyone *truly* does.

But like all things that mankind doesn’t understand, we like to think we do. Occasionally, when we get enough courage to go near a computer and ‘Log on’ we spend hours ‘Surfing’ around doing nothing. Could this be the most efficient way of using the internet? I don’t think so.

So what are we doing wrong? This is the question we ask ourselves when we log off the net and realize that we’ve just spent 2 ½ hours of our lives doing absolutely nothing.

But there are a lot of services that the inter net can provide. ‘e-mail’ for instance, this services provides you with an ‘on-line’ mail box for which you can make up you own name and offers you a place where your friends can contact you. But I can get the same service with my existing mail, I hear you say. True, this is a much more efficient way of receiving mail, except if you forget you password and you ‘secret question’ answer, then your stuffed because can’t get into your e-mail and all you friends think your ignoring them cuz you haven’t replied and so then in turn ignore you, so when you finally remember your password you have no friends and no mail. As a consequence of this, e-mail leaves the majority of people with brows bent and lips tightly pressed, there is no mistaking that they are bitter and perverse if not surer-sidle.

However if e-mail doesn’t seam the thing for you, you can go in chat rooms, download ICQ or use a message board to communicate with other people. All of these options are much safer as they don’t usually end in death, although they are not as fun.

To find something on the internet the easiest way is to use a search engine. Although this sounds easier than it is. However the searching part is not that hard it’s finding a suitable search engine which causes most people the trouble. This is because of one simple reason, there are so many. And with the greatest human weakness being the lack of decision making ability it is no wonder that this is often the task that causes the greatest grief. But once you’ve over come that and picked the engine that is ‘right for you’ all you need to do it type in the thing you are searching for (eg porn) and hit enter. Then all that is left is sweeping through the results (in this case millions) until you find what your looking for.

If you have an address and you type it in, but it won’t work, there could be a few problems. Either your too late and the person who set up the site has died of the stress of maintaining it, or you’ve forgotten the three crucial letters,of which there are two sets. One being ‘www’ which goes in front of most sites and Two ‘.com’ which come after most sites, without these simple three letters you could severely hinder your internet experience.

Although the net has many other uses these are the two most common, communicating and looking up porn. If you can mater these two activities you will be just about as ‘net able’ than the next person.